list

Survey reveals the top 10 worst behaviors to have while on a conveyor-belt sushi date

Listen up, sushi romantics–the following types of misconduct at a revolving sushi restaurant will probably cost you a second date.   

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Top 8 weird things we think after playing video games for too long, according to Japanese gamers

Wait, you mean I can’t just hold the Y button to run anymore?

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Japanese Twitter shows off list of seven hilarious differences between being 18 versus being 81

Are you closer to the 18-year-old or 81-year-old side of the spectrum?

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Evolving with the times – pachinko parlors in Japan are changing to better serve their clientele

If smoke-filled rooms, loud noises and low win rates weren’t enticing you to go, there might actually be a few reasons to visit one now!

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The best rivalries in manga as chosen by Japanese voters – Top 10 list

They might be bad guys, but they’re not baaad guys.

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A call to arms: 5 Japanese potato chip flavours the west badly needs

This may upset you to learn, but if you’re a potato chip fan living outside of Japan then you’re seriously missing out…

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10 reasons why Japan’s Kuroneko Yamato is probably the best delivery service in the world

And it’s not just because they’ve got an adorable logo…

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Top 10 searched keywords from Japanese Google in 2015 include terrorism, rugby, and Splatoon

It’s been a busy year for Japan!

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The 10 best anime about idols, as chosen by the Internet masses

With gigantic casts of characters who are groomed to become fan favorites, what’s not to love? Did your favorite idol anime make the list?

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50 things that surprised our writer when visiting China 【RocketExperience】

After a week in China, one of our Japanese writers brought home a list of thoughts to share with us.

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Ninja or Saiyan, who tops the list of the 15 most powerful male anime heroes?

These are the most powerful anime heroes as chosen by fans outside of Japan. Who will claim the top spot and does your favorite make the list?

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Learning Japanese? Beware these 19 loan words—they’re not what they sound like!

Speakers of certain languages sometimes get a leg-up when learning Japanese. For example, Japanese includes Chinese characters, which means Chinese speakers can often get the gist of a text even if they don’t understand the grammar. Similarly, Korean speakers might find that Japanese grammar is kinda similar to theirs. And we native English speakers get a huge helping hand from the hundreds of English loan words that have been adopted into modern Japanese.

But sometimes, these loan words aren’t really our friends at all. Instead, they’re what’s known as false friends – words that sound similar in two languages yet have a completely different meaning. In co-opting English words into Japanese, sometimes our crafty Nihonjin pals have assigned our words to things that actually mean something totally different. It’s almost like they’re trying to trick us!

Join us for a quick primer on some Japanese loanwords you might have heard before, and what they really mean!

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Are these normal Japanese things weird to you? 10 things that might surprise you when you visit Japan

When traveling to a foreign country for the first time, no matter how well-prepared you are, there’s sure to be a lot you’ll be surprised by! Let’s take a look at 10 things in Japan that might surprise you when you first hop off the plane.

With these in mind, you can enjoy your first trip to Japan even more!

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18 common traits that describe the typical man, as told by Japanese Twitter

As a man, I have to admit that sometimes we can be a little confusing. Why do we do weird things like try to flavor food with burps, or lock iPhones with our butts? There are some mysteries that may never be solved.

But one Japanese Twitter user thinks they’ve found a list of 18 things that apply to pretty much every man, especially concerning relationships. Will this list help decode the confusing “man brain,” or is it just a mass of macho mumbo jumbo? Read on and decide for yourself!

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Seven amazing things our Japanese reporter learned while visiting Cuba

RocketNews24’s Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro visited Cuba a few months ago and had an amazing time in the Caribbean nation. Although he’s already shared several of his travel adventures such as sampling sushi at a five-star hotel and getting a haircut in the popular local style, Wasai recently compiled a list of the top seven things that impressed or surprised him about Cuba.  

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30 things that will go through your mind on a business trip to Tokyo, according to our Japanese writer

It is perhaps common knowledge by now that folks in Japan tend to go on business trips a lot. Whether this is actually true or an exaggeration, we can’t exactly say, but it certainly seems that there are a ton of workers moving around the country as part of their jobs. And it should go without saying that quite a few of them end up coming to Tokyo.

So, what is it like taking a business trip to Tokyo for someone who lives outside of Japan’s most populous metropolitan area? Read on to find out!

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Sayonara, sushi: 21 little things that people miss after leaving Japan

As a reader of RocketNews24, chances are you already have a pretty big soft spot for Japan. You may even already be living in the Land of the Rising Sun or have plans to fly out just as soon as circumstances allow.

But sometimes, even when we love a place with every fibre of our being, we just can’t stay forever. Family anxiously awaiting our return; work commitments; financial constraints and more mean that, at some point or other, many of us have to wave goodbye to Japan and return to our respective homelands.

Some of the things people miss about Japan will be immediately obvious, but others tend to sink in only a few weeks or months after returning home. Today, we’re taking a look at 21 of the little things, in no particular order, that Japan does so uniquely or so incredibly well that foreigners really start to pine for them once they finally say sayonara and head home.

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12 things that shock Japanese people: “Did you know kids leave out cookies and milk for Santa?!”

Foreign cultures are always going to have things that surprise outsiders. Roasted shellfish snacks may be perfectly normal to Japanese people but not quite so appetizing to us, whereas kids dressing up on graduation day is endearing to us but downright terrifying to Japanese people.

The Japanese website CuRAZY recently compiled a list of 12 extremely popular tweets that revealed some sort of “surprising information.” Far more surprising than the tweets themselves though is the fact that so many Japanese people actually found the information surprising in the first place.

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Are you a control freak, baby, or tough guy? Find out what your sleeping position says about you!

Think about how you slept last night. You probably rolled around a little, found a comfortable spot, adjusted a bit, then eventually slipped into sweet slumber in that position. If you’re like most people, every night you probably choose a similar sleeping position. And the position you choose can say a lot about your personality, your subconscious, and even your deep-seated fears.

We have a list of eight common sleeping positions along with the typical personality traits of each. Are the predictions spot-on for you, or were the psychologists sleeping on the job when they dreamed them up?

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Name Game: Finding the origin and prevalence of Japanese surnames just got easier

I love business cards, because I’ll admit it, I am not good with names. First names, last names, if you tell me, I will probably forget it. (Kirakira names are usually easier to remember though!) The good thing about living in Japan, however, is that despite there being over 100,000 different surnames, a really high percentage of people use only a few really common names.

To make it even easier for me, different areas of Japan often have higher densities of certain names. For instance, there are about 4,700 people in Japan with surname Maru (丸), but more than 50 percent of them live in southern Chiba. So, if you forget someone’s name in southern Chiba, Maru might be a safe guess.

A website and smartphone application called Myoji-Yurai Net allows you to find out the prevalence, origin and other fun information about the top 3,000 surnames in Japan. It’s actually quite fun!

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